Hermes 2015 - University of Sydney Union

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HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
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The University of Sydney Union
is proud to publish Hermes,
Australia’s oldest literary
journal. Founded in 1886, Hermes
is produced by student editors
and submissions are open to
students, staff and alumni of the
university.
Published by the University of
Sydney Union, 2015.
ISSN 0816-116X
HERMES 2015
Issue 109
manufactured
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY
EDITORS
The University of Sydney Union
acknowledges the Cadigal People
of the Eora Nation as the
traditional owners of the land
on which we are located. The
USU recognises that the land
belonging to these peoples was
never ceded, given up, bought,
or sold. We pay our respects
to the Aboriginal Elders both
past and present and extend this
acknowledgement to any other
Aboriginal or Torres Strait
Islander people here with us.
Elle Burchell
Phoebe Chen
Madeleine Gray
Tahlia Pajaczkowska–Russell
DESIGN
Peta Harris
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
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CONTENTS
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LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
10 The News – Mark Macrossan
12GOLDFISH Paradoxical – Lyndell Fairleigh
14 Automatic Joy – Mira Schlosberg
18 @ Fisher Library – E. Burke
42 derivative 1 – Ceren Guler
19 L TRAIN – Jake Antoun
43 American Apparel Appropriation – Alice 20 Jacaranda Dreaming – Lesley Carnus
22 The Disassembly Line – Mariana Podesta-
Diverio
26 vogUing hard – Alice Race
28 The Dog On The Log – Mark Macrossan
30 MANufactured woman – Alice Race
31 Inter subjectivity – Alice Race
32 Letters – Shivani Anora N
33 Decompression – Mackenzie Nix
34 Castrato – Lane Pitcher
38 The wound – Siena di Giovanni-Arundell
Race
44 BREAKING NEWS! – Lesley Carnus
46 The Surgery (6th Edition) – Yi Jian Ching
47AXIS – Mackenzie Nix
48 Running on Cement – Emma Cooper
50 FAST – Gabrielle Rowe
51 UNTITLED – Alice Race
52 DRUNK – Shivani Anora N
53 CHEMISTRY – Elle Burchell
54CONTRIBUTORS
40Cogs in conversation – Mariana Podesta-
Diverio
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
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Letter from the Editors
Creation is very hard.
It is hard to look at a blank piece of
paper and then to pour yourself onto it,
expressing something of depth and feeling;
and it is very hard to put it out where
someone else can pick it up, examine it,
and let it seep in. It is hardest of all to
create something that moves someone to see
the world a little differently.
That much we can agree upon.
Then we have the process of ‘manufacture’,
which is different – or at least assumed
to be. We don’t think of manufacture as a
practice of much gravitas; we think of it
in machinery, in mines, and in the building
projects across the street.
What we don’t think about is the
intersection of creation and manufacture.
That for every repeated motion there has to
have been an original. That for every idea
there is a natural process of selection
until only the bits that we want the world
to see come out. That sometimes, we have
to work against what has already been
manufactured and cemented in our minds, and
in the minds of others, just so that we can
say something authentic.
We’re four Arts students. We’re not experts
in the economy. We don’t know anything
about Fordism. The closest we’ve gotten to
a production line is the checkout register
at Coles. But we do know about the world
we live in, and the artifice that shrouds
emotion at every turn. We know that
sometimes what we look like isn’t what we
are. And that creation and manufacture go
hand in hand.
That’s why we’ve got stories about gender
identity. We’ve got poems about dogs that
look like frogs. We’ve got a boy chopping
off his body parts for pizza toppings.
And a woman taking a child to school, then
hanging out wet sheets.
They’re your stories too.
We are proud to be Australia’s oldest
literary journal, and prouder still to be
able to provide a space where the voices
of the other can be heard. Thank you to
everyone who contributed this year. To The
University of Sydney Union, for trusting us
to do whatever we wanted; to Menuka Mudliar
in particular, for keeping us on track. And
to Sydney University: thank you for letting
us in.
Elle, Phoebe, Maddy and Tahlia
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
Mark Macrossan
And now the news.
Bonsoir à tous
and welcome all to
wreckage and the magnitude
of slaughtered
sheep
and people, damage still to be assessed.
The tests require
expect no sleep
contamination is extensive.
Overwhelming devastation
first we have to warn you:
viewers may find scenes upsetting
and the scale of the disaster
should they not succeed in
-vestigations into
estimations based on
catastrophic
computations
helpless children on the
ground the picture’s bleak
and news is yet to reach
all dead and washed up on the beach.
The earthquake toll
and little hope for most
the mud
the flood
the village washed away.
And now to sport.
Recapping
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10
The News
first we
have to
warn you:
viewers
may find
scenes
upsetting
bleeding
we look forward to your
hope you have a lovely evening.
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
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Goldfish Paradoxical
Lyndell Fairleigh
To my daughter
The goldfish curl themselves
Within the circle of white ceramic.
They are not real.
Their bellies have been stamped
With square labyrinthine signatures.
They are not intestines.
The fish swim across the crackled surface
Tails flicking at sucking mouths.
They are not painted.
Mother and daughter share this meal
It is part of their history:
The fishes’ bellies are rounded
With a mix of vegetables.
They are not from the sea.
A meeting point amid the divagations
Their piscine flesh is formed
Of their daily lives.
From soft flours and peanut oil.
There is no butter.
No flesh is shared here
Except in the genetic pool.
Chance is a great maker.
Tails flicking at
sucking mouths.
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Automatic Joy
Mira Schlosberg
Ari wondered if their leg hairs were
appropriate for the synagogue. Luckily for
them the hairs were so soft and light that
they had drawn no attention or rude remarks
so far. Ari peeked at them around the edges
of the prayer book balanced on their knees.
Too scruffy, they thought, for a family
event. They pulled their feet in under the
bench. Their head hurt from smiling in too
many family photos. They didn’t know the
words or the tunes to any of the songs and
that made them want to cry. They thought
this might be just because of the ecstasy
comedown and moved their eyes from their leg
hairs to the prayer book once again.
Last night Ari had been high with PJ in PJ’s
bedroom and they had done what they always
did – listened to music and had sex – but
this time it was extra fun because mood
elevating drugs were involved. Ari was in
a t-shirt and underwear and wrapped in a
blanket that served as a cape, a dancing
cape, and they were dancing to the music
that PJ was playing for them. PJ knew a
lot about music and had a great chin. They
said, “I know what we should listen to!”
Ari was dancing and not paying attention
and then suddenly, on the screen of PJ’s
laptop, there was a goth robot boy decked
out in ruffles and velvet being manipulated
by a beautiful and terrifying looking woman.
It was The Dresden Dolls’ “Coin Operated
Boy”, and it was a revelation. In this
blurry, probably illegally uploaded music
video, Ari saw their own personal brand of
artificial boyhood right in front of them
for the first time. Their fabricated and
effeminate masculinity.
Amanda Palmer was singing, “Coin operated
boy, all the other real ones that I destroy
cannot hold a candle to my new boy and I’ll
never let him go and I’ll never be alone.”
So that was it. Ari Weiss, Fake Boy, was
better than a real boy and worthy of love.
PJ was yelling “FUCK HIM IN THE ASS” over
the less explicit lyrics of the censored
video version of the song and telling them
that’s how Amanda Palmer sang it live. The
dancing cape was warm and soft. Everything
was wonderful.
Ari had never had a bar or a bat mitzvah.
Their side of the family was the less
religious side. But they had been to a few
of their friends’ and were thankful simply
to have survived being on the fringes
of those painfully awkward adolescent
milestones. A few disapproving glances at
their unshaven legs now was nothing compared
to being stifled in formal clothes watching
the friend they may or may not have had a
crush on talking about being “wholly holy”
and becoming a real woman without them,
or of standing in a circle of girls all
discussing how uncomfortable their low-cut
dresses made them feel while the boys stole
ice cubes from the catering inside and
ran around in the trees lobbing them at
each other.
Ari had long since stopped thinking of
their body as gendered female, and since
then things had been slowly changing. Hair
grew and it was welcome. They dressed for
their broad shoulders and gangly arms and
stopped trying to accentuate their waist.
They no longer minded their small chest. And
Ari’s body responded, taking on new shapes,
hanging differently and more freely, growing
in new directions. Then something bad
happened. No longer not Girl enough, they
suddenly felt not Boy enough.
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in their newly robot-inspired
state of mind
The rabbi was too young and too attractive.
Ari thought this unfair and too much like
a bad and predictable movie. They glared at
his slick, dark hair and his full beard.
They could see lots of little dark hairs
poking out of his sleeves around his wrists.
He probably had a lot of thick respectable
leg hair that would never be considered
scruffy or go unnoticed if he wore a skirt
to a Bar Mitzvah. If I went on testosterone,
thought Ari, I could be a beautiful Jewish
boy like that. Ari wondered if they should
go on T and then become a rabbi.
PJ had gone to take a shower, and when they
came back naked and with tiny droplets of
water still lingering among the freckles
on their shoulders Ari, in their newly
robot-inspired state of mind, had fucked
them as though neither of their bodies
were permanent. All pieces could be taken
off or added on as desired. Their current
physical states of being were temporary, and
could be enjoyed while they lasted without
feeling like a trap. A boy might have a
cunt and this was simply the way he was
built. He might not have always been that
way and he might not always be this way. It
didn’t matter.
Ari looked from the rabbi to their cousin
next to him, reciting his torah portion.
He was a scrawny and pimply adolescent. Ari
looked at their father and their uncles
sitting around them, yamakas strategically
placed to cover the ever-growing bald spots
on the backs of their heads. Ari already had
bad skin, and all the lush Jewish curls on
the top of their head were a lot to give up
for a bit more leg hair. Maybe testosterone
was not such a good idea after all, they
thought. The hot rabbi was probably just
an anomaly, or some rude joke sent from a
higher power to make them upset. Maybe God
really did hate fags after all.
Ari looked at the soft fluff on their legs
again, and at their thin wrists and dainty
fingers holding onto the prayer book. They
told themselves they did not really want
to look like a boy anyway, and this was
partially true. Better to keep options open,
to stay fluid. Temporary, they repeated to
themself. Temporary, temporary. And then
Holy. Holy holy. Holy holyholyholy.
A friend of PJ and Ari’s was getting top
surgery in a month’s time. “I feel like we
should get him a present,” said PJ, “What do
you think?”
“Well, if it were me,” said Ari, “I would
like a big cake. A big cheesy store-bought
cake with tacky icing. And on it, it would
say ‘Mazel Tov on Becoming a Man’.”
E. Burke
Jake Antoun
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l train
he path from your
yes
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@ Fisher Library
Your head is sleeping on your arms, which
blocks
the path from your eyes to your phone, which
blocks
the black screen of your ipad, which
blocks
the open lid of your macbook pro, which
blocks
the blue login screen to which my eye is drawn.
I watch you sleep
while standing
searching
for a free screen on which to rest my eyes.
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
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urple blossoms, skirt
eld high flamenco st
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Jacaranda Dreaming
Lesley Carnus
Purple blossoms, skirts held high flamenco style,
dive-bomb a skylight in Balmain.
The poet paces as he reads to a roomful
of retirees and earnest part-time writers.
ii
But Eusebio’s purple haze that fell, sang
the texture of a distant land,
of farm-hands planting fields rich with seed
as they chanted heterophonic songs before
cicada-evening.
iii
Years later in a classroom in Sydney,
he writes how he yearns to taste matapa
wrapped in cassava leaves, to hear again
the steam and snort of buffalos straining
to shoulder free from ploughs, and to feel
the touch of a familiar hand.
iv
He hid his head on his mother’s knee,
silent and still, when the men
waving rifles and machetes led his father away.
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He hid beneath the floorboards, a rag stuffed
into the baby’s mouth when this time
they came for his mother.
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Here, safe at last in Glebe, I see him out
on the streets buying smack.
With the tender sleep the fix will bring,
perhaps he’ll dream a drift of mauve
blossoms falling.
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
Mariana Podesta-Diverio
Behind the counter is suburban hell, where
paralysing heat saturates every pizzamaker’s t-shirt and crotch, and swathes of
tomato gloop mimic sinners’ blood. Like an
indecisive customer staring blankly at the
menu, Boy daydreams of escape and considers
his options.
The first is a medium Meat Deluxe, no
pepperoni, extra cheese.
He slops on too much tomato sauce but
figures the chicken will soak it up. On busy
nights, you can get away with one soggy
pizza per hour.
Fingers are the easiest. With vinyl gloves
on, nobody can see if your body stops
at your palms. Fingers and then toes.
On the base, he sprinkles mozzarella to
create adhesion between the base and the
ingredients, careful to spread it evenly
over the sauce because cheese clumps are
roadblocks for sliced ham.
Like anchovies, each finger will be easiest
to conceal if placed in an asterix-like
formation, fingernail facing the edge and
knuckle pointing to centre. Extra cheese.
A standard pizza renders eight slices, so he
does not include his thumbs. One finger for
each slice.
Italian sausage, onions, ground beef, cheese
again. Oven time.
He picks up the pizza with his raw palms,
careful not to let blood drip onto the
ingredients or the floor.
suburban hell, wher
paralysing heat
saturates every pizz
maker’s t-shirt and
crotch,
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The Disassembly Line
Next, he tops a base with barbeque sauce
for a “Cajun chicken” pizza. They call
it “Cajun chicken”, but there’s nothing
decidedly “Cajun” about it. It has the same
base as the “Mexican” pizza and the same
chicken used for pizzas that are allegedly
representative of other exotic places,
the only difference being a sprinkle of
nondescript orange powder added after
the mozzarella.
After the sauce, he uses his now-pulsating
hand stumps to pick up marinated chicken
clumps and spreads them evenly across the
pizza’s surface. Outside first, always, and
then in concentric circles. Extra cheese.
The heat from the giant oven overwhelms
his senses; a bead of sweat drips down his
spine and is absorbed by his underwear’s
oversized elastic – that’s the style now
– and its successor prepares itself in a
small pool where the last of his hair ends
in sunburnt neck skin. Manager’s bad dance
music and the huge extractor fan drown out
the boisterous delivery drivers and dough
rollers who are sweating, too. When the
white noise cannot itself be cut out, one
must consider the alternative. Boy knows
his ears have to go next.
On a swirl of peri-peri sauce, he places
each ear, pink from overheating and
carefully sliced off with a fileting knife,
on the pizza. Next, his nose on a large
Garlic Prawn. A medium Tandoori Chicken
hosts his lips.
“Boy, we need bacon in the backup
container,” barks Manager.
“Okay,” says Boy, the word barely audible
through a gurgle of blood.
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
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A small red lake has formed on the ground near the
fridge, where pastas and dessert toppings are kept, and
Boy uses the slippery surface to glide from his station
to the smallgoods compartment where his bacon is kept.
Like in that episode of Tom and Jerry where the kitchen
floor is frozen and the room becomes an ice rink. Boy
loved Tom and Jerry.
With a fresh set of gloves covering his brachial stumps,
he fills the bacon tin, and can’t help but drip a little
on the prosciutto and ham as he does so.
Boy is left-handed and always hated this about himself,
so with a hollow pop he yanks his left arm clean out of
its shoulder socket. The bones are no longer connected
with the articular cartilage, but now they’re just held
in place with muscle and skin, and the limb dangles like
a pendulum.
With a meat cleaver, Boy meticulously severs what’s
left, beginning at his armpit and going until the start
of his collarbone. His high school science teacher had
insisted the collarbone be called the “clavicle”.
Now it is harder to balance, since Boy needs one arm –
his only arm – for ingredients.
Rocket and spinach dehydrate considerably in the oven,
shrinking to a third, or less, of their original size.
This gives Boy an idea. He walks over to the oven and
places his unwanted arm on the conveyor belt, because
smaller ingredients are easier to hide.
He’s mostly gone now but still has some work to do, and
the conveyor belt’s full run is less than four minutes.
Beetroot has the ability to colour one’s bodily
fluids. But one’s bodily fluids also have the ability
to colour beetroot. He holds his shoulder stump over
the tin of roasted beetroot – a cornerstone ingredient
on the “Healthy Choice” menu – and hovers. The dark
purple chunks, usually laborious to pry apart due to an
atmosphere lacking moisture, now float like haemoglobin
catamarans in their silver container, transporting
miniature but detectable blood clots from the mushroomend to the pumpkin-end of the vegetable container section.
After a failed attempt at axing off his
left leg, for symmetry of course, Boy
decides one eyeball is the best garnish for
the kid’s-sized Ham and Pineapple, because
nothing could be more repulsive than
pineapple on pizza. Extra cheese.
A hazel cornea, split eight ways – one
for each slice of course – holds itself
together surprisingly better than other
body fragments. The cramped shop is hazy
now for Boy who, having lost so much blood,
is leaning against the oven for support.
He’s only half-there.
The taste of freedom has a bite to it, like
the sweet-and-sour upper notes of the blood
puddles now covering the tiled floor. A
sudden head spin means freedom is closer
than ever. A dozen lucky recipients of
Boy’s young, supple, self will soon taste
freedom for themselves.
The passage of time and space is through
them now and sewerage receptacles hungrily
await the fruits of Boy’s escape. Now he
can swim forever.
Boy’s final thought is the last order of
the night to go through the oven.
Leftover pizzas, incorrect orders, and
extra garlic breads are given to customers
to maintain face. Manager calls it “going
the extra mile.”
It might be the perfect business model
indeed, so Boy’s charred self, extra
cheese, will go to the next customer who
happens to wait a little too long for their
large Margherita, extra cheese.
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
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voguing hard
Alice Race
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
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The Dog On The Log
Mark Macrossan
It was him. I saw him again.
The dog on the log.
I was just out for a nonchalant walk
in the fog. He looked like a frog,
the dog on the log,
just crouching in silence, ready to pounce.
In the fog he looked like a frog
or rather a rat.
Just crouching in silence, ready to pounce,
he sat like a cat with his eye on a bird.
Or rather a rat
lost in its thoughts.
He sat like a cat with his eye on a bird
unaware of the danger and
lost in its thoughts,
all plump and ready for eating.
Unaware of the danger and
whistling softly, I edged closer,
Still dreaming of crispy-skin chicken when
I should have been more alert, I screamed
and roared like a lion,
running like buggery for the nearest tree.
I should have been more alert. I screamed
Call in the air force! before the little bastard,
running like buggery for the nearest tree,
disappeared from view.
Call in the air force before the little bastard
kills someone! I yelled to no avail, and
disappeared from view,
hoping I’d never see that dog on a log...
But I did. It was him. I saw him again.
all plump and ready for eating.
The dog opened wide and showed me his teeth.
Whistling softly I edged closer
still, dreaming of crispy-skin chicken, when
the dog opened wide and showed me his teeth
and roared like a lion.
still, dreaming of crispy-skin chicken
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
Inter subjectivity
Alice Race
Alice Race
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MANufactured woman
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
Decompression
Shivani Anora N
Mackenzie Nix
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letters
A lifetime is not enough to sustain
all the grief in your heart.
Spilled ink paints ghost portraits
of strained skin; you mourn for the lives
that you never lived.
Your words breathe life
from your cigarette fingers, a slave
to your heart’s anguish.
Energy cannot be created nor destroyed
through the eye of time;
you stitched hope back into life.
A construed elegy is your legacy but
reincarnation won’t give you to the sky.
I can read your thoughts in the lives
you left behind.
To whom do I owe the pleasure of teaching me
the difference between hand and body?
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
Lane Pitcher
Cas•tra•to [noun] (pl. castrati) “...men who, in early youth,
had been surgically robbed of their sexuality, and thus of their
identity and emotional equilibrium”1 in order to preserve the
soprano range of a pre-pubescent male voice and to uphold St
Paul’s words regarding the Baroque tradition; “Let your women
keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them
to speak”.2
Usually from extremely low socio-economic backgrounds, children
between the ages of five and twelve were ‘scouted’ by impresarios
and, if found to be suitable, drugged with opium before having
their testes removed. The operation was usually performed in
barbaric conditions at the hands of barbers or the child’s own
desperate parents. If the boy awoke alive and with a voice, a
rigorous training schedule would ensue, usually lasting ten years.
From this tuition came voices of unimaginable, unprecedented
beauty and a level of fame historians say surpasses even the
greatest pop stars of the twenty-first century. The castrati were
celebrities not only for their highly constructed voices, but also
for their intriguing, androgynous appearance.
“Imagine a voice that combines the sweetness of the flute
with the animated suavity of the human larynx.
A voice that leaps and leaps, lightly and spontaneously,
like a lark that flies through the air,
intoxicated …” 5
Procedure
The wife bustles in, candle in her hand
As night and rain fall on our barbershop.
My scissors have one more snip to withstand,
Whilst obviously inhumane, castration was an overwhelmingly common
practice in Europe between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries
(illegalised by 1903), with estimates of two to three thousand
children caponised per city, per year.3
For which gold, in advance, sits on bench top.
One such city was Naples.
To rid, with ecstasy, apoplexy –
It was described as the Western world’s “musical dream factory”.4
A body is held, pinned underneath me –
The pop of poppies its incantation
While I steal nature’s initiation.
Thawed in a milk bath, the boy’s in deep sleep.
A sanguine surge lurches ‘neath the surface,
And soon the tub flowers; roses knee deep.
A bouquet of blossoms. Budless. Useless.
Better it drowns in soporific flood,
For no rose shall bloom in this bed of blood.
1
Cecilia Bartoli and Markus Wyler, Sacrificium (La Scuola dei Castrati)
(Valladolid: Decca, 2009).
2
1 Cor.14:34, The Holy Bible, King James Version.
3
Bartoli and Wyler, Sacrificium (La Scuola dei Castrati).
4
Ibid.
5
(Words of Enrico Panzacchi), Charles de Brosses, Lettres Familiares sur l’Italie
(Paris: È. Perrin, 1885), quoted in Angus Heriot, The Castrati in Opera (New
York: Da Capo Music Press, Inc., 1974), pp. 36, 37.
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
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castrato
37
36
Absconder
Peccato Nobile 6
I pace and pivot, human pendulum,
There is a tattoo burnt beneath my flesh,
Time’s ticked ten years but strikes now his debut:
An unfinished hymn of damnable lust.
Sistine’s solo… But he’s gone, echoes numb –
Through the boy’s music this ode writhes afresh,
The Chapel is fugued with disgrace, in lieu.
My soul’s sanctity annulled in one thrust.
On soles of ignominy, I run, run
He’s the trinity – man, woman and child,
To the Piazza, weave past each column.
A creature of silk, satin and velvet.
The shadows, once straight, sprint off from the sun –
We bishops are led – each equ’lly beguiled –
A silhouette sea now pounding, “succumb”.
Into a state of sinful excitement.
The umbrages, having eyes in the wind,
A foul orgy rose for the company;
morph into a boy, the boy – my student.
A eunuch and girl’s clothes slit stitch from stitch,
He’s scrambling from fate, glory to rescind.
Bodies laid back for a masked jubilee…
Cares he for my name? He’s fled, imprudent.
They challenged us all to guess which was which.
Although he took my career when he ran,
Is God the greatest of iconoclasts,
he’ll never feel what ‘tis to be a man.
Striving to make all His men pederasts?
Nobile sin: Prostitution, involving the higher social classes or Church circles
and their publicly solicited castratos.
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HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
Siena di Giovanni-Arundell
I want to tell you about how the rotting smell of the
lake only hits you halfway across the bridge to the
mainland, and the taste of fear in your mouth as it
sours in the back of your throat and curdles in your
stomach. I want to tell you about the way the heat
bubbles and rises through the air above the first line
of trees. I want to tell you about the wrench of the
machines as the thread pulls and the levers twist and
crash through the air like knives through my blood,
tearing my flesh.
But you look at me and all you see is skin skin skin,
and my breath, oh my breath only matters when it’s
coiled against yours frosting the bones deeper than
your chest.
And I can only look at you through the bottle, it’s
emptiness thickening the air between us forming a
solid in my lungs that whispers to me to not breathe
in too much or you’ll disappear.
I’m not sure if I’m hollowing myself out to make
room for you or if you’re burying yourself in the
empty spaces that hide beneath my fingertips.
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The wound
all I feel is surface
And you conceal yourself beneath a cage of solid
steel that is welded shut somewhere against your
middle because your father yelled at you for getting
blood and guts on the carpet last time you opened
up. So when I reach out to you all I feel is surface,
the smoothness of your edges burning my palms,
leaving welts on my skin. I still feel the ghost of you
like a necklace that’s been yanked from my chest.
And yet I’m not always sure if you’re real or if they
pressed you together, spat you out and boxed you
up like the rest. If I could go to the store and find
twenty more of you sitting neatly in their plastic
packaging blankly staring back at me. But it’s been
five years now since you first dug your claws into
my neck and the wound is still weeping. The wound
never stops weeping.
It stains the white of my skin and exudes a smell
like rotting carcasses that keeps them all away. And
everything is yellowing and my teeth are falling out
into your hands and you drop them so when you
walk away the heel of your boot crushes them and
turns them to powder. And slowly all of me falls off
and you catch me then drop me to the floor until
I am heaped in the corner like a pile of sand. And
is it me or is it you that people pretend not to see
when they sit across the room filling their glasses?
And the wound is still weeping.
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
41
40
Cogs in conversation
Mariana Podesta-Diverio
She lived in “half a house” now, and had
always lived in flats, so she thought
“well now I can get a cat”, so she got the
little devil.
I didn’t know how to spell the word she said
when she was telling me about the kitten,
but she said it was the French word for
“little devil”, and made fun of the way
English-speaking vets pronounced it.
When I got home I asked an online translator
for help with a few variations of the
spelling to no avail. See, this was one
word, not two, which complicated things.
Romance languages do this thing sometimes
where they bend the “adjective/noun =
noun/adjective” translation rule of thumb
by having single words that incorporate
both the noun and the adjective into one.
Examples include perrito instead of perro
chico in Spanish (little dog) and apparently
whateverthewordsheusedwas instead of petit
diable in French (little devil). Maybe the
word she was using was one of those kooky
borderline slang words that only exist in
small vernaculars here and there rather than
the language as a whole. Good words tend to
do that.
She said it was usually her who didn’t need others, but with her
new kitten the dynamic was the complete opposite. She made this
point by gesturing outwards and then inwards with both palms
outstretched, and said her kitten wanted to be friends with a
neighbourhood cat.
“It’s like a triangle,” she said.
A love triangle with cats, I guess. Her voice climbed an octave
when she talked about the way the little devil ran amok.
When I asked her about job stability she said “basically, you’re
fucked.” I liked that.
The pauses in my speech pattern grew longer until, eventually,
I ran out of verbal motor oil and I choked up. I told her I was
withdrawing from medication and that everything was very
“… heightened”.
She suggested I “go get a triple chocolate cake or something
after this is done” and I said I didn’t like sweets.
“I’m basically a fundamentally flawed person, Elizabeth!” I said,
and she laughed before I finished the sentence which was okay.
Then she asked me about other things that I got my serotonin
from and even though I gave her a digestible answer I should
have said “Well, nothing anymore. Hence the withdrawal,” but
that’s not how these things work.
love triangle
with cats
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
American Apparel Appropriation
Ceren Guler
Alice Race
43
42
derivative 1
there
in that corner
in that yellow bin
lies a thought
that has already been thought
they say all art is
recycled
ake me new
never new
go on
make me new
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
45
44
BREAKING NEWS!
Lesley Carnus
Today it was my turn to take
the child to school. We held hands
as we discussed knot-free
hair, raffle tickets and words
that end in i.
For the last
two blocks she played a rondo
on her recorder as fast as she could.
I hung out the wet sheets,
At bell time, my daughter and I met
for coffee. We laughed and complained
trimmed the champagne-pink bougainvillea;
then rummaged through cluttered
in the morning sun squeezed
up against a Western wall.
I caught the wrong bus,
so strolled home through the back streets
of Darlington admiring
and in the flapping shade,
kitchen drawers till I found the envelope
of Flanders’ poppy seeds
and dug a narrow trench for them
against the olive-green, back fence.
the frangipanis
Soon I shall listen to Israel
as I listened
out of Egypt and practice the alto part
to the soft burr and buzz
of tradesmen’s tools tempered
and honey tea and feeling composed
by a magpie’s melodious reply.
I write, asking after you.
for Tuesday’s rehearsal.
I sip lemon
sun squeezed up against
a Western wall
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
AXIS
Yi Jian Ching
Mackenzie Nix
47
46
The Surgery (6th Edition)
You know they always said,
You’ll never feel a thing,
As I was torn from limb to limb,
From “Hippocratic Oath” they swore,
To glorify, as per my whim
But I had forgot,
When Drake first took the
Minted globe off its ledge
And got eviscerated
By wrought iron edge
Whilst atop this ziggurat
Choking on the vapour of bones,
With sinews built into
Neon architecture
I have never been so bright before –
I have never been so pathetic.
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
49
48
Running on Cement
Emma Cooper
They say that with each recollection, a moment is rewritten.
They say that each time you remember something, you summon not
the event itself, but the way you last recalled it. They tell me
I’m wrong, but I still believe if I touch something – if I feel
it knowing I’ll need this memory – then I’ll remember it truly
and in unrelenting detail that can’t be fabricated. I savour
the sensation of my bare feet in dirt: of calluses and slapping
concrete and sticky kitchen floors. The present feels less
fleeting when you’r barefoot and touching the ground.
My childhood was standing ankle-deep in the ocean, the swell
sucking sand from under my soles. It was tanned big toes drawing
my name in dust. It was running on cement. It was yelps and
squirms as Dad plucked splinters from my heel with a needle and
two pressed fingers.
Our teenage rebellion was embarrassing our parents like they
embarrassed us. It was walking, with slurred speech and aching
soles, through moon-lit cane fields. It was driving to the Gorge
in a rattling Cressida, my feet pressed against the windshield
as I slumped low in the passenger seat and you blasted the radio
and rode the clutch because it was your car and you’d drive it
however you wanted. It was sensing the pulse of the earth and
wanting to feel it race.
I remember when you told me to take that bike, that bike you knew had
no brakes, and ride it down that hill. I know it didn’t happen like
that, but that’s the way I like to tell it. I put a piece of barbed
wire through my foot that night and I remember feeling it but not
feeling pain until I saw in the light that I was cut across my arms and
legs and blood was seeping from my foot. It’s okay though; I was always
getting hurt. Like when you left me at my high school graduation with
my hair all curled and my skin all powdered, when you asked me to hold
your cigarettes for just one second, when you said that you’d be back,
but then you took acid with your friends and I didn’t see you for days.
You never invited me and the awkward straps on my shoes blistered my
heels and I vowed to disappear so completely that for years and years
you would wonder if I was real or a stranger you dreamt up. But then
you called my house and my brother gave me the phone and I think you
made me laugh and I remembered how it was only us who laughed at the
same things. I haven’t seen you for a long time, but I remember our
bare, grubby feet and the way it made me feel. To be feral. To not give
a fuck. I remember telling myself there’s nothing to be said about skin
that’s soft and delicate, and everything to say about a body that’s
scarred and bruised and weathered by life. I have more reason now than
ever to tell myself that. I have more reason now than ever to err on
the side of abandon. But mostly these days, I just sit and remember
things and I wish you could see how funny it is to think about you
after all the years that have happened.
I think a moment needs to be looked at for a long time in order to be
remembered. Forgetting seems saner. Those particular recollections
caught on a loop in my head: have I stirred them beyond any resemblance
to the actual truth? Am I reliving fragments of these moments again and
again, like echoes bouncing off the walls of my mind, getting further
and further from the actual past? I sit inside my skull and remember
the things they say: that there’s no separating imagination from truth;
that there’s no original memory; that the memories closest to original
memories are not the ones you’ve dwelt on – they’re not the ones you
dream on – but those you’ve reminisced on least. When they say the past
is impenetrable, my heart grows cold and the blood in my feet grows
still. I can’t be sure which stories are stories and which are real.
Some days I can’t be sure I’m not making everything up as I go. Still
though, as often as I can, I unlace my boots, peel off my socks, and
feel the floor against my feet and the breath of the ground.
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
untitled
Gabrielle Rowe
Alice Race
51
50
FAST
his face lighted from below
in a halo of tablet glow
he craves the self-effacing
effect of the selfie
he ends his social-media bender
with a facebook fast,
which he weans himself off with
byte-sized bits until he binges
he can’t articulate the cyberspherical clutter
as it multiplies, virus-like,
into a vertiginous mass
stultifies his tongue with
the tang of truncated text.
language atrophies as he tilts over
a snapchat shot on a techno-high
and aspires to a pyre
of substance he fritters away
with a sybarite’s desire for an imminent iphone.
all the spurious perks
of the twenty first century.
he packs his e-porn back
swipes away the traces with a fingertip touch
he cauterises his emotions
as he squints at the screen,
upsizes
an image of himself,
and belches the back end
of an instagrammed dinner.
Inside the high rise on sixteen floors he soars. Morning sun splits the vertical
blinds and divides the slick surface under his feet.
He pries his eyes from the device to daylight.
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
CHEMISTRY
Shivani Anora N
Elle Burchell
i carry with me
you are a recipe for disaster
a stubbornness
the person you love is 53% water
that won’t let me forget the
but I am filling up with bile
entropy required for you to burn
my lungs burn when I try to explain to you.
and a poisoned tongue,
just waiting
53
52
DRUNK
how is it, my love, that you care so
little
so
you are sulphur; you are a match head
what will it take
flying off in the moment of ignition
for you to swallow
and catching in my hair.
these second hand goods of mine?
your love is the smell of burning.
how many cigarettes does it take
to set my mind straight
and
our percentage of error for
perceived compatibility
must be too under-scrutinised
would you curl up to me
must be too high
when you’re done?
must be too
to denude my legs of hair?
must be
for you I sculpt a comely fiction
…
a woman grown oh so miraculous
i am a jigsawed mess,
not perfect
like her.
solve for ex,
tell me why.
solve for ex
I am a cerebral being, my dear.
your love is a pathogen
breaking down my
careful
ability to stay self observant
sleek and clean and without her fuzz
a beast stripped down to
pretty
teeth pulled
claws blunted
/distant
I sit in the bath
//empirical
seventy five litres of water laving my skin
///scientific
my own cells scrubbed clean and dead,
I sit in the bath
floating in a nebula around me.
and contemplate the razor’s blades
here I am my own universe
why does your love make me want
thirty five litres of water
four of ammonia
five of blood
here I am
here.
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
Shivani Anora N is a co-founder
of ‘Paper Lens’ zine and thinks
cats and naps are better than
most people.
Jake Antoun “Of all the people,
we could be two.”
Siena Di Giovanni-Arundell
is 19 years old, majoring
in History.
Elle Burchell is a 23 year old
writer and student who dislikes
lists, biographies and irony.
E.Burke is a second year B.A
Science/Arts student.
Lesley Carnus coordinates
the Refugee Language Program
at Sydney University, lives
in Chippendale and writes
political and personal
poetry... and sings.
Yi Jian Ching is a Science
student wondering how to escape
this earthly domain. He also
enjoys long walks on the beach.
Emma Cooper writes stories
and poems.
Mariana Podesto-Diverio is
interested in the mechanical/
human divide, reading, and
almost everything else.
55
54
CONTRIBUTORS
Ceren Guler “I never live in
fear, I’m too out of my mind.”
- Kanye West
Mark Macrossan recently
completed a Masters Degree
in Creative Writing and is
currently undertaking an
M.A.(Research) in Poetry.
Mackenzie Nix is grappling
with his lack of design skills
despite the fact that he’s on
the verge of finishing his
third year of Architecture.
Lane Pitcher is an ex-opera
singer, with musical taste
varying from dubstep to
Debussy. An all-time famous
dancing tampon, she wishes to
pursue a life as strange as her
cat seems to think she is.
Alice Race is completing a
Masters of Cultural Studies.
Gabrielle Rowe completed a
B.A Hons (Sydney) in French
Literature and is currently
enrolled in the Graduate
Certificate – Creative Writing.
Mira Schlosberg is a recent
University of Sydney graduate,
future Masters of Creative
Writing student, current zinemaker, and gay barista™.
Lyndell Farleigh is a mother
and a teacher. She wrote her
first poem at thirteen; it was
called ‘The Fog’.
HERMES 2015 – Issue: 109
56
The paper used for the cover of this book is accredited
with ISO 14001, the international standard for
organising and achieving continual improvement in
environmental management systems, including energy,
efficiency, waste reduction and pollution control.
The paper used for the pages of this book is certified
by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which works
to promote responsible forestry, biological diversity
conservation and protection of old growth forests.